This Problems Court and the following four papers are a result of
interactions among a group of regular ARF attendees. We meet for lunch after
the last session each year to discuss how we can use what we have learned to
improve our practice. The closing session of the 1997 conference was the
presentation by JamesKing and NormanStahl (King & Stahl, 1997) on oral histories. We
decided to return to our campuses and attempt to integrate some of the concepts
from that address into our content area reading courses. Our experiences at ARF
led us to the literature on personal narrative and story. In turn, we developed
the Literacy Recollections Project. We continued our dialogue over email, and
constructed a website that was used to organize the project and record our
students' oral histories. What follows are individual accounts of our
experiences. These four papers attempt to synthesize our thinking on how
instructional activity that engages students in the active telling, writing and
reading of personally relevant narratives effects their education as teachers.

Trathen and Dale begin by framing a theoretical perspective on narrative story. The
purpose of their paper is to examine ways that the reading and writing of
narratives contribute to teacher education, in particular, the potential of
narrative to shape ways of thinking, attitudes and beliefs. Next, Ulmer
describes how students in her content area reading course interviewed teachers
and students gleaning stories that connect instruction to real life
experiences. Moorman follows with a description of the "Literacy
Recollections Room," a web-based literacy biography project. Students in
this project attempted to capture the story of the process of acquiring
literacy, both their own and others. Gilbert* concludes with an examination of narrative reflections that students
wrote as part of participation in email discourse.

*The
former Susan Nelson was married during the summer of 1999, and now goes by
Susan Gilbert—but that’s another story.

Narratives in Teacher Education

WoodrowTrathen, MichaelDale

A man is always a
teller of tales, he lives surrounded by his stories and the stories of others,
he sees everything that happens to him through them; and he tries to live his
life as if he were telling a story. (Jean-PaulSartre)

Teaching, then, is intimately tied to the
understanding and telling of stories--stories of communities, students, and the
lives we all live, as well as the stories embodied in the disciplines we teach.
Learning to teach involves becoming attuned to particular narratives, learning
to do what teachers do, learning to think and talk as teachers, and ultimately
becoming what a teacher is. Stories embody language (the primary tool) as the
vehicle for developing concepts, meanings, and understandings about teaching.
Through stories we learn to think, feel, and talk like a teacher. Skill use,
ways of thinking, and language use are embedded in the narratives of the
teaching community, and we develop the identity of a teacher by engaging in
these. Borrowing from JamesGee’s (1990) articulation of literacy as social practice:
Becoming literate in the discourse of teaching, then, means that we must
acquire the tool use skills, ways of thinking, language, attitudes and beliefs
of the members of the community of teaching. Narratives offer a means of
entering the discourse of teaching. JoAnnePagano (1991) has described the relationship between
narrative stories and teaching in this way:

Teaching
is, among other things, a discursive and interpretive practice . . . . When we
teach, we tell stories about the world. Some stories are scientific, some
historical, some philosophical, some literary, and so on. Educational theories
are stories about how teaching and learning work, about who does what to whom
and for what purposes, and most particularly, educational theories are stories
about the kind of world we want to live in and what we should do to make that
world. (p. 197)

Why
narrative?

The Oxford
English Dictionary relays the following meanings for narrative and related
terms:

Narrate: 1) To relate,
recount, give an account of; 2) to make a relation. Narration: 1) The action of
relating or recounting; 2) a story; 3) that part of an oration in which the
facts of the matter are stated. Narrative: 1) That part of a deed or document
which contains a statement of the relevant or essential facts; 2) an account or
narration, a history, tale, story, recital.

From these meanings, three characteristics of
narrative seem germane: (a) Narratives are an accounting of information, a way
of relating information; (b) the information that narratives present (“state”)
is deemed important and relevant; (c) the tale or story form is used to present
this important information. Yet, narrative is much more than is contained in
these descriptions.

Narratives (stories) contain the potential
for an emotional connection to our lives and imagined ones. “Reading great
works of art and reading life are different but not unrelated activities”
(Putnam, 1990, p. 183). What Putnam
suggests through this comparison is an intimate connection between the
narrative from and understanding human lives, our own and the lives of others.
Narrative forms are a means to experience and touch the world, its joy and
despair (Iser, 1972; Johnson, 1993; Touponce, 1966). Narrative, both the
construction of our own individual stories and the reading of others’, is a way
of seeing and understanding the richness and complexity of human lives.

Narrative
can be a crucible, a meeting place of experience and philosophical ideas, where
emotion is transmitted as narrative shows us worlds we do not know, or corrects
our perspective toward the world we know all too well (Freund, 1965). In
essence, the narrative form elicits a morally imaginative engagement. MarthaNussbaum describes aspects of moral
imagination in Cultivating Humanity:

We are drawing on Socrates’ concept of “the examined life,” on
Aristotle’s notions of reflective citizenship, and above all on Greek and Roman
Stoic notions of an education that is “liberal” in that it liberates the mind
from the bondage of habit and custom, producing people who can function with
sensitivity and alertness as citizens of the whole world. (Nussbaum, 1997, p.
8)

To become world citizens we must
not simply amass knowledge; we must also cultivate in ourselves a capacity for
sympathetic imagination that will enable us to comprehend the motives and
choices of people different from ourselves, seeing them not as forbiddingly
alien and other, but as sharing many problems and possibilities with us. . . .
Here the arts [narratives] play a vital role, cultivating powers of imagination
that are essential to citizenship. (Nussbaum, 1997, p. 8)

[Through narrative, readers]
embrace the ordinary. . . [and] concrete realities of a life of poverty are
brought home to them with a textured vividness unavailable [in other types of
text]. (Nussbaum, 1997, p. 95)

Novels and other narrative forms enable what LouiseRosenblatt (1994) calls “aesthetic” reading, a personal, lived
through experience of the text which can have a liberating, fortifying effect
on the reader’s life. Although Nussbaum has argued eloquently and persuasively
in a number of her writings that novels are unique constructions for rendering
the richness of human life, other narrative forms also are capable of revealing
“the interaction between general human aspirations and particular forms of
social life that either enable or impede those aspirations, shaping them
powerfully in the process. Novels [and other narrative forms] present
persistent forms of human need and desire realized in specific social
situations” (Nussbaum, 1997, p. 7).

In teacher education
programs, then, fictional narrative and other narrative forms (Bullough, 1994;
Bullough, Crow, & Knowles, 1992; Bullough & Gitlin, 1995) are critical
(arguably necessary) components if we want prospective teachers to understand
education as a “liberating art,” and not primarily as a means of slotting
students for narrowly defined economic roles. In particular, given the
characteristics of students entering teacher education, these prospective
teachers need a richer and more enriching story of education. They need a story
(a theory) of education to counter the narrow and corrupting economic story
they currently live and enact.

Dewey (1904) and
others have argued the importance of a coherent theory of learning and
education--in Pagano's (1991) terms, a coherent story of learning and education--to guide teachers’ instructional
decisions.Yet, researchers have found teachers’ theories and beliefs to be
shaped by years of experience (their lived stories in school), often experience
that runs counter to perspectives engendered by teacher education programs.
Furthermore, these beliefs seem to be resistant to critical reflection and
change (Kagan, 1992; Liston & Zeichner, 1991). Students entering teacher
education possess what MarthaNussbaum (1995) has referred to as an
“economic mind"--what we would call an economic story about the meaning
and value of education. No one who has been in teacher education for any length
of time can fail to recognize the characteristics of these students; the most
salient one is the seeking out of “techniques” that will be “useful” in their
imagined classrooms of the future. Such students come to us already disposed to
see education and teaching and learning (including their own learning) through
a particular story, one which is in complex and subtle ways tied to an
oftentimes unreflective acceptance of economic utilitarianism. So, like any
other form of education, educating teachers is a process of building upon, extending
and reconstructing past experiences--particularly schooling experiences (Dewey,
1938)--and assisting students in creating new stories of teaching.

However,
it is not just the narrative but also how one reads the narrative. In teacher
education, novels and short stories about the complexity of human lives inside
and outside of school settings give occasion for students to confront the
narrowness and limitations of an economic perspective of education and to
develop a richer conception of education, one tied to discovering truths about
the human condition and our role in it. Adler and Van Doren (1972) refer to
this kind of reading as syntopical, and argue that it requires the highest
level of reader engagement: “A book is like nature or the world. When you
question it, it answers you only to the extent that you do the work of thinking
and analysis yourself” (p. 15). Students can critically reflect on perspectives
of education and begin to develop alternative conceptions of education through
thoughtful reading of narrative and critical discussion in class.

The “call for
stories” in education and teacher education and arguments for their value is
not new (Booth, 1988; Bruner, 1996; Coles, 1989; Greene, 1978; 1988; Nussbaum,
1986; 1990; 1995; 1997). However, the assault on narrative seems especially
intense as the next millennium begins. From state mandated accountability
measures to the pervasive framing of education within a narrow economic
perspective we find a constriction of vision, an obtuseness in seeing the world
of teaching and learning. This constriction of vision represents an immense
challenge for teacher educators as the 21st Century approaches. But as Nussbaum
has concluded:“Obtuseness is a moral
failing; its opposite can be cultivated” (Nussbaum, 1990, p.156).Constructing and reading narratives within
teacher education are powerful ways of cultivating sight which is “finely aware
and richly responsible” (Nussbaum 1990, p.136).

Unless prospective
teachers can come to see themselves and their own learning within a perspective
that respects the mystery and complexity within each life, then they will never
be able to see this mystery and complexity in the children and adolescents they
will teach, never see and understand the ways in which their students' desires
and aspirations are either enabled or impeded within the social context of
schools, homes, neighborhoods and society. Narratives (reading and writing
them) have a critical role to play in both eliciting and developing the ability
to see and understand the complexity and richness of human lives. Each of the
remaining papers will examine various narrative forms (oral stories, written
biographical stories and narrative reflections) as critical tools in teacher
education. In the next paper, Connie Ulmer uses teacher and student historical
narratives to explore the implications of classroom experiences on literacy
development.

As
societal needs and goals of the new millennium change, governmental,
educational, social, and political forces combine to promote the growth of
individuals so that they can become better citizens of the world. This
challenge is not new, but how it is approached is changing. The lines of
communication are fluctuating between horrendous and stupendous with the
bombardment of the information age and improvements in technological
communication. With these fast paced advancements (email conversations, video
on line interactions, telecommunications internets, websites, webtvs, virtual
reality encounters, etc.), dialogue can get lost in the movement, and it is
from the dialogue that learning and growth take place. Dialogues that occur between
different arenas of society support learning from the past and dreaming for the
future.

In
the educational arena, theory and research are embracing the constructivists’
theories of learning (Rosenblatt, 1978; Smith, F., 1985; Wells 1986).
Constructivists, beginning with Piaget (1923/1926), Dewey (1938), and Vygotsky
(1978), have laid the foundation for us to consider dialogue as a key player in
growth and learning. For Piaget, children construct their learning through
cognitive development where "the dialogue" is internal (Ginsburg
& Opper, 1969), and for Dewey and Vygotsky individuals are always
constructing meaning through their own participation in events where "the
dialogue" is external. The dialogues that occur in these events often
provide the medium for learning to take place. As participants construct their
own understanding, they are better able to communicate that understanding and
transfer it to new situations. It is important that students in these
classrooms are encouraged to learn from a variety of dialogues.

One
form of dialogue that is conducive to introspective thinking is an oral history
interview. Through oral history interviews, students learn from others
informally; the conversation sets the pace and direction in which the dialogue could
evolve. “Classroom oral history is a process whereby student interviewers and
their historical informants create tape documents of lasting personal and
scholarly value" (Sitton , Mehaffy, & Davis, 1983, p. 115).

Oral
histories begin with historians learning about events that happened in the past
from interviewees who were present or who were members of the time when an
event occurred. The focus of oral histories is the event. During the taped
interview the interviewer takes notes and later transcribes the tapes, which
are then recorded and preserved for the future. Another form of oral histories
is storytelling. Through storytelling a great deal of unrecorded information is
passed from one generation to the next. Storytelling keeps history alive because
it emphasizes the “humanity” of the events that take place. Unlike the taped
oral history interviews, storytelling is about the people in the event and
takes the form of monologue, which does not allow the listener many
opportunities to dialogue with the individual.

Combining
the two (storytelling and interviews) allows for a more interactive
conversation. Qualitative researchers use this combination more often today as
a way of interpreting oral histories for a variety of studies investigating
literacy processes (Freeman & Lehman, 1998; Pile, 1992). As a result, using
oral history as a learning tool, the focus of the interviews continues to
change. The process is being considered as well as the product. What can be
learned by doing oral history interviews? Sitton, Mehaffy, and Davis (1983) state “the participation becomes the
focus rather than the event. Learning is created in an authentic setting. . .
Students feel they are ‘doing real work’” p.115.

Method

This
is a descriptive study of the use of oral history interviews in two different
classrooms. Two questions related to the use of oral history interviews were
examined. The first class was asked what they could learn about literacy
instruction in content classes from oral history interviews. The second was
asked what they could learn about curriculum design from oral literacy
interviews.

Participants

Following
the Foxfireprinciple of inquiry
(Wigginton, 1986), using oral history interviews, two university classes set
out to find what they could learn about literacy instruction in their future
classrooms. The term literacy is inclusive of traditional parameters such as
reading and writing, but it is not exclusive of newer parameters that invite
literacy as discourse (Burbules, 1993; Gee, 1989). The first group consisted of
pre-service teachers (13 undergraduate students) whose content subject areas
included mathematics, science, history, Spanish, physical education, health
education, and art education. They were preparing to be secondary teachers.
Students in the second group were teachers in the field (9 graduate students)
seeking to learn more about language arts (reading, writing, speaking,
listening, and visualizing) instruction at the elementary and middle schools.
Both groups wrote their own autobiographical literacy histories and then
interviewed others from the community about their literacy histories and what
it means for literacy instruction in the future. For clarity, the first class
will be called the content class and the second class will be called the
language arts class.

Materials

The materials for analysis evolved from discussions
following readings and demonstrations in the classrooms. The materials
evaluated were autobiographical literacy histories, parameters for interview
design, taped literacy interviews, write up of interviews, literacy history
website, and reflection papers. Each will be discussed separately.

Autobiographical
literacy histories. Both classes
wrote their autobiographical literacy histories before they did the oral
literacy history interviews. These autobiographies explored literacy as
students defined it from their own disciplines. As a physical education major
for example, one entry in your autobiography may be descriptions of different
aspects of your childhood that supported your chosen career and descriptions
from your childhood that deterred you from your choice. This included your
choices based on likes and dislikes of school, community, or governmental
encounters that affected your literacy development from childhood to the
present.

Parameters
for interview design. The parameters
for the content class to design their questions for the interviews emerged from
discussion students had about their expectations and fears of literacy demands
they could encounter when they taught. The students also wanted to know if
teachers taught using some of the same methods they were taught with. The
prompts for the interview questions were related to the interviewees':

·literacy
upbringing.

·teaching
field.

·positive
and negative experiences with reading and writing in their field.

·college
courses and classroom practices.

·changes
seen in the future.

·specific content literacy needed to teach in
their discipline.

The parameters for the language arts class
question design were given in the instruction package the students received
with their course syllabus. The directions were:

*Write
autobiographies

*Design literacy
questions considering the following parameters:

1. Student
to student interactions - Discuss what activities promote students working
together or hinder students working together. Discuss when students interact.

2.
Teacher to student interactions -
Discuss who initiates the interactions and how often.What types of conversations occur in the
discussions?

3.Tasks - Discuss the types of events that
occur in the classroom and when. Describe the activities that occur and who
initiates.

4.
Time frame - Discuss the duration of
events or interactions when they do occur. Who loses interest?

5.
Prompts/interjections - What type of
prompts or interjections are used to keep interactions going in the class? What
types of interjections and who interjects?

*Interview at least
one of each: a student, pre-service teacher, elementary schoolteacher and a middle school teacher.

*Pair up, listen to
tapes, and discuss categories that emerged related to literacy.

*Write information
on an overhead that related to the five classroom interaction parameters to
share with class.

*Write high points
most often mentioned from all groups together on the overhead.

*Make a list of
positives and negatives for the classroom. Design a classroom considering these
changes to use in your language arts class.

Taped literacy interviews. Students in both classes picked out
similar themes or issues that most interviews had in common and discussed them
in small groups. They shared at least one taped interview that addressed one of
the issues or topics.

Interview write ups. After the classroom discussion, students from
the content class wrote up what they learned from the literacy interviews and
class discussions about literacy in their content area, compared to the
different interviewees’ perspectives. The students in the language arts class
charted what they learned from the interview class discussions and wrote up
what a lesson could look like if all the points they learned from the interview
were considered.

Literacy history website. Journey into Our Literacy Histories is a
website created for students (the content class) to write to each other about
their autobiographies and interviews from other professors, parents, community
members and elementary or primary students. (Due to technical difficulties in
creating the website, not many students were able to post to the site in the time
allotted. Therefore the website is not the major focus of this paper.) The
purpose of this paper is to discuss what students learned from oral literacy
interviews and the autobiographies about “literacy practices” that should and
could occur with successful classroom practices.

Reflection
papers. The reflection
papers from both groups compared and contrasted what they had written in their
own literacy autobiographies and what they heard from the interviews.The process students went through to
participate in this literacy project was also included in the reflection
papers. In addition, students discussed strategies they tried and will try in
the classroom as a result of some of the discussions about the interviews.

Design and Procedure

Considering learners as thinkers and
participants in their own knowledge, these two classes were designed to elicit
a great deal of dialogue about literacy. The first class looked at literacy in
different content fields, and the other investigated changes in the definition
of literacy and instruction in language arts classrooms. Instead of the text
being a book in the classroom, it was decided that the oral literacy histories
and autobiographical histories would be the text for discussion. The content
students were introduced to literacy by writing their own autobiographical
literacy histories on the website, along with the oral literacy interview
write-ups. When students read each others' interviews, they were fascinated by
the similarities in theirown beliefs,
experiences, and fields of study. On the other hand, they were disappointed
that routines in some of the classrooms didn’t foster excitement about
learning.

In the sample interview summary (see Appendix
A), the student describes what she has learned. Throughout
her summary, she interpreted and interjected her views, discussing what she
learned and what she thinks about what she learned. In her own autobiographical
literacy history, she said she always wanted to be a math teacher but she
wanted ways to make math fun and not so routine. In her summary she is faced
with a teacher similar to those in her past. She has always had teachers who,
as she stated, “make the class boring with busy work.” Having the opportunity
to evaluate her own experiences helped this teacher reinforce her beliefs about
teaching. She could see changes she would like to implement in the classroom
when she teaches.

Other math teachers in the class shared
ways that they could counter the type of teaching the teacher found routine in
this particular class. A few students shared some of the hands-on games
teachers talked about in their interviews that would increase motivation to
enhance learning in math classes. While discussing their interviews, students
in the other disciplines (science, history, etc.) explored the idea of becoming
change agents because some of their students might fall behind if left in an
uneventful environment like the one described in the oral history interview
(see Appendix A).

At
the onset of the project students were concerned about testing expectations in
their field, but in the interviews they found that teachers at the middle
school level did not share their testing fears. The classroom teachers
discussed ways to help students individually through the testing process. Two
interviewers were glad and surprised to see that literacy issues were being
dealt with across content areas.

In the language arts setting after the students
tallied all the major points from the taped literacy interviews that correlated
to the parameters set in the question design, they created a chart describing
categories that evolved from the data (see Appendix B). The chart showed all the positive and negative comments from the
interviewees (parents, students, teachers, and others), describing their
feelings about the type of classroom interactions that occur. Many of the
comments about writing, fun, and choices came from the students. Teachers named
grammar and task-oriented interactions as the top two things they would like to
work on.

The final stage of this project was to
design a classroom that takes into account more of the positives and fewer of
the negatives described. Students went into their own classes using some of the
practices they learned from the oral literacy interviews. The results were
good. One teacher said she couldn’t believe how easy it was to try cooperative grouping, one of the
positives she had always heard about. She didn’t think her students would work
well with each other because they never did. Another teacher talked about
having more choices in her classroom
because all five of the people she interviewed mentioned this as an important
part of instruction.Four of the nine
teachers said that even though a focus on grammar
was presented as a negative and not
really creative, they felt it had to be a major part of the class because
of testing.

One reading teacher in the class admitted that she had
a very negative attitude in her class many times; but after listening to two of
her interviews, the elementary student in particular (Bob), she wants to
diminish that negativity. “How do you feel about your school experiences now
that you are in the fifth grade? ”,“I
don’t like school anymore because they moved me in a low group with a teacher
who doesn’t like us because she thinks we are stupid. . . and I guess. . . we
are. . . dumb.” Bob’s answer was an eye-opener for her and perhaps a beginning
in her own learning about her role in the language arts classroom.

Discussion

Looking at the discussions that occurred when
using oral literacy histories as a learning instructional tool, a few
implications for classroom instruction become apparent.

1.Discussions become more knowledge based with
information from actual classroom settings. Classes should be set up to allow
for more dialogue.

2.Teachers begin to listen more and have a
sense of ownership of the conclusions they develop. Both undergraduate and
graduate students learned by listening to their classmates share information
about themselves as compared to others. Students also took more ownership in
designing curriculum.

3.Using oral literacy histories also allows
students to go beyond themselves in their own thinking process. They think
about what learning is all about and about ways to improve environments to
provide opportunities for successful learning to take place.

After reading the students' reflections on
this study, there is a need to include more oral history interviews in the
learning process. In the content reading class, all thirteen students said even
though it was a lot of work, the oral history interviews were worth doing; they
learned about classroom practices they could and should be taking back to their
own teaching. Seven of the students said they never thought they were
responsible for any literacy instruction until the interviews. They thought
reading skills were the responsibility of reading and English teachers. The
other six said they see a need but they feel they wouldn’t have time to deal
with the reading issue because they would lose content instruction. They did
say that a few of the teachers and students they interviewed made them think
about the importance of connecting literacy to their content teaching.

The language arts students were all impressed
with the process of listening to the tapes in the class. They said they were
finding more information from the discussions in class while listening to the
tapes. Dialoguing with others helped them interpret what was being said. Three
admitted they didn’t think they would learn anything from all this work, but
they did. A first year teacher was so excited about an activity she learned
involving two of the positives on the result chart, she wanted to share it in
her final presentation for the class: Journal
writing and experiences with reading. She brought her 4th grade
daughter to class the day we were making books, and her daughter caught on
immediately. The daughter not only finished sewing her book together, but she
also filled it with three short stories. The mother was so impressed she went
to her classroom and had her third graders make books. She shared their books
with the language arts class.Overall,
using oral history interviews as “text” enhances the transactions that must
occur for meaning to transfer into great learning experiences (Rosenblatt,
1978).

Like oral stories as presented in my study,
written stories also provide a powerful means for self-reflection and learning,
as Moorman reveals in the next paper.

He has been teaching there for five years
now. . . I interviewed him on February 2, 1998 on issues concerning literacy. His
responses and reactions to his responses follow in five main categories:
personal literacy, the teaching field, high school teaching, teaching high school
math, and implications/ issues raised from the interview.

He remembers doing math "way back in
school." He has always liked math, and he especially thinks fondly of his
high school years. "I had some math teachers that were good...and math was
always my best subject. I enjoyed figuring out other ways to do it (the
problems) that the teacher wouldn't teach." His subject preference was not
skewed toward mathematics alone. He also enjoyed English. "I had a great
English teacher my senior year. . . Mr. Grant " However, he readily admits
that he did not like English as much because he felt like he had a stronger
aptitude in math. His perceptions of his ability in math molded the decisions
of his future, as well as the influences of his teachers.

He had many teachers in high school that
influenced him in becoming a high school teacher. "They (his teachers)
looked like they were having a good time with their profession. And that's when
I started thinking about becoming ... a teacher. Mr. Grant had the most influence
over me becoming a teacher because we had a lot of fun in his class." It
seems that he was heavily influenced by his teachers to pursue a career in the
teaching profession. However, it seems that his motivation for becoming a high
school teacher was driven by his passion for high school mathematics and a
desire to coach soccer.

He did not speak directly on the subject
of high school teaching. However, implied from the conversation is that he
loves doing high school math, especially algebra. He feels like he can make a
difference in the lives of the kids, and he wants to help them to achieve their
goals. From his experiences, he felt that a career in high school teaching was
appropriate for him.

The most important aspects of the
interview were the issues that he raised about literacy. He established his
definition of literacy as being "not only the ability to read, but the
ability to understand what has been read." He also distinguished between
math literacy and literacy. Math literacy mainly has "different
vocabulary." It is important for students to be able to read so they can
understand "the instructions to the different parts of the test, or
worksheet or your homework." However, very little independent reading is
done from the textbook. He tries to provide as much of the material to the
students during class, so that the book is used as little as possible. But he
does go over the example problems in the book, helping students to understand
the steps taken by the authors of the textbook.

I have the opportunity to observe his
class on Mondays and Wednesdays. His class is in a routine every day. The
students arrive each day, review homework, learn a new lesson, and then do
their homework. The derived implication of the students is that math is the
same day in and day out. The implication is that math is only a different set
of vocabulary. The focus is that math is something memorized, not something
that is gradually learned. However, this is the very reason so many students
have problems with math. Math needs to become a process for each student, not
discrete facts and vocabulary that when memorized, guarantee success. Math is
like any other subject; it requires extensive thought, analysis, and synthesis
to make certain ideas more understandable.

Different
modes of communication to teach skillsNo
games used to teach LA

Enjoys
reading groupsIsolation
in reading

Writing
in journals about personal experienceTime
is limited for teaching

Had
fun, teacher used projects, and prompts

Liked
correcting grammatical errors in classNot
covering curriculum

Children
are there own best critics

Has
students read in different modesBroad
based curriculum

Spelling
integrated with novels being readPreparing
students to communicate with other people

Hands on projectsStudent
reading aloud without warning

Practice time before reading aloudRote memorization

worksheets
without purpose

Volunteers
to read aloudRound
robin reading

Literature
rich classroomWriting
without experience

Tell a story
before writing

Change
stories endings; sequels

___________________________________________________________________

Results of the tally of all the student and
teacher interviewees showing positive and negative events that occur during
literacy interactions in their classrooms. The graduates used these categories
to evaluate their own teaching.

Literacy
Recollections Website

Gary Moorman

I returned from the 1997 ARF conference with four
interrelated concepts running through my mind. First, I have been impressed
with the power of narrative as a pedagogical tool, as Trathen and Dale (1999)
discuss. I have found that getting my students more in touch with their own
personal narratives was an effective way of helping them find the "inner
self" that is crucial to effective teaching (Palmer, 1998). Second, I was
interested in applying new technologies to my teaching. Particularly, I was
interested in the "webboard" software at my university that allows
the construction of websites with interactive dialogue capability. Third, I was
actively looking for ways to help my students write to authentic audiences as part
of an effort for them to see writing in my courses as more than a mere
assignment. Finally, I was intrigued with what King and Stahl (1997) had
presented in the final keynote address. Could I use oral histories as a tool
for uncovering insights into the reading and writing processes, and to literacy
instruction?The course I designed for
the following semester was based on these concepts. I believed that by
integrating literacy biographies into my instructional repertoire, I could
enrich my students’ theoretical and practical understanding of literacy and
literacy instruction. In the following sections, I first provide a description
of the course and my thinking during its development, and of the technology I
integrated into the course. Then, using mostly the words of the students
themselves, I explore some of the insights that students acquired as a result
of their participation in the course.

Designing
and Implementing the Course

I implemented this project in the spring semester,
1998, in a master’s level reading course entitled “Reading to Learn.” There were 13 students enrolled in the
class; all had teaching experience beyond student teaching, and all but two
were currently teaching. This course traditionally focuses on theories of
reading comprehension, reading comprehension instruction, and content area
reading. Recently, I had struggled to include socio-cultural perspectives on
literacy, but had found it difficult to find appropriate ways of framing the
theory. Based on King and Stahl’s (1997) insights at ARF, my intention was to
engage students in a theoretical dialogue by centering the course on the
development of a written literacy biography. In other words, the literacy
biography would serve as an instructional tool to clarify and illustrate this
theoretical perspective. Personal perspectives derived from the biographies
would be the basis for broad discussions of literacy and reading and writing
instruction.

An important part of the process of
developing and implementing the course was my active participation in all
activities and assignments. I joined the students in writing and posting all
biographies, as I describe below. Parenthetically, I found this process highly
insightful in terms of my own understanding of literacy and literacy
instruction, as well as the power of these activities in teacher
education.

To prepare for the interview and authoring of this
biography, I had each student write two autobiographies. The first focused on
students' earliest recollections of literacy events; emergent literacy and
early schooling events. The second autobiography explored the students’
experiences as literate adults. The students kept a "literacy log,"
cataloging literacy events during a single day. From this log, they constructed
a picture of themselves as a reader and writer, and of how these reading and
writing activities fit into their socio-cultural lives.

The experience of writing the autobiography helped in
the construction of "interview protocols," which were used to guide
the students' interviews. In small groups, students brainstormed questions and
prompts, which were then placed on the class listserv, an email network that
distributed messages to all class members (see details on the listserv
below).Each student then could
"cut and paste" from the listserv to develop their own "custom
made" protocols.

After securing informed consent from their
interviewees, students conducted interviews. I suggested that interviews should
last for about an hour, but most students' interviews were substantially
longer. All but one student tape-recorded the interview (the exception found
that her subject was intimidated by the presence of the tape recorder). Most
transcribed at least part, and some all, of the interviews.

During this process, a number of other instructional
events were taking place. We read Lee Smith's Oral History (1983), a
novel about life in the rural Appalachian
mountains. Parenthetically,
the setting for the book is within a short driving distance of our campus. This
book served two purposes. First, it connected students to the Appalachian oral
tradition. And second, it allowed me to integrate and discuss content area
reading strategies into the course. I would assign the readings along with
various strategies, then we would discuss the effects of the strategies in
relation to our expanding understanding of literacy. I also integrated
"writers' workshop" into the class. I provided class time for
students to assist one another in revising and editing the biographies and autobiographies.
This served both as a model of current best practice in writing instruction,
which was explicitly addressed, and to improve the quality of the students’
biographies.

Technology
Components

Two significant telecommunications
technologies were woven into the project. All students subscribed to a
"listserv" established specifically for the class. Listservs are
email network systems that distribute messages to all subscribers. Students
made regular posts to the listserv to discuss class, make suggestions, ask for
assistance, provide advice, and generally extend our discussions beyond the
classroom walls. In addition, as mentioned above, the listserv was a tool for
constructing the interview protocols. All students were able to access protocol
ideas from all class members via the listserv. Students could "cut"
those suggestions they found useful off their email, then paste them onto word
processing documents. This greatly reduced the amount of work required to
construct individual protocols, while simultaneously increasing the
quality.Gilbert (1999) analyzes the
dialogue from this listserv.

The second technology is a website that I
constructed with the assistance of Susan Gilbert (1999). This website is
available via the World Wide Web (http://am.appstate.edu/~moormang/CLiC/CLICDS.HTM).
All autobiographies and biographies were posted on the website. This made all
student work public, and the writing and posting of texts an act of authentic
publishing. In addition, webboards allow responses to individual posts, which
allows feedback from the instructor, classmates, and anyone else who might be
interested.In fact, several of the
biography subjects posted responses.

Student
Insights

This project turned out to be a powerful
experience for both me as the instructor and for the students. Using students'
personal and first hand experiences as a springboard for discussion seems to
intensify the learning experience and bring life to concepts that often remain
inert, if learned at all. To illustrate, I will explore how three concepts
emerged from the process: (a) that learning to read and write is a powerful
process that provides vivid and lasting memories; (b) the importance of being
read to as a child; (c) the lasting effects of both good and poor instruction.
I will use unedited text from students' early literacy autobiographies. These
writings were far more powerful than I had anticipated. When designing the
course, I had thought that the interviews and biographies would be the primary
source of discussion. As the course evolved, however, I found the
autobiographies to be an additional source of insight into literacy and
instruction.

The process of writing the autobiographies
enabled students to reconstruct many long forgotten childhood memories. One
student describes the process:

When I
started to write about learning to read as a child I thought I would have a
hard time trying to remember the details. The memories came fairly easy once I
started. It is always fun to travel back in time to when I was a child. I was
very lucky in many ways. My overall view of reading instruction seems to be
fairly positive.

The power of these memories is captured in the
following post. Note the initial denial of vividness of the recollection.

My earliest
recollections of learning to read and write are sketchy, fragments. Most
involve a concrete object or person that triggers a memory of my childhood.
Most likely, these recollections are equally memory and imagination. Nonetheless,
they seem genuine and indisputable to me. I have many memories of being read to
as a child. It was a nightly routine for me to be “tucked in” and read to. All
of my memories of this include my father and my grandmother. I’m sure other
members of my family read to me but they are the ones I remember. I also
remember my father letting me pick the book. I had many books but there were a
few I choose every night. These were Two
Little Miners, Horton Hears A Who
and Mother, Mother I feel Sick. The
latter two of these are filled with rhyming words which I am sure had a great
deal to do with my choosing them continuously. Two Little Miners, was published in 1949. This book was my father’s
when he was a child. I think this may have been the reason I initially liked
the book but eventually it became one of my favorites. My fascination with this
book could be explained in many ways. It is the story two men that in the mines
get covered in black soot and by nighttime they were “black as night, black as
a crow, black as black, coal black” (I can’t believe I still remember that!”).
My interest in this book may have been because I grew up in Monroe and was fascinated by the many different races
surrounding me. It may have been because I was a naive little girl that thought
if we all covered ourselves in soot we could all be just alike and everything
would be better. It could simply be that getting that dirty without getting in
trouble seemed too good to be true!

Two themes emerged from the early literacy
autobiographies that I would like to explore in the remainder of this paper.
The first is on the powerful effect of being read to as a child. The following
post is typical of the way students were able to capture a sense of warmth and
well being associated with early reading experiences:

One of my
fondest childhood memories is of my parents reading a bedtime story just before
tucking me into bed each night. My mother and father would take turns with the
nightly ritual. I don’t particularly remember having a favorite book, maybe a
book about bears. I can visualize the pictures in a Bible storybook. The
pictures were always the most important part of a book for me. I guess I have
always been a visual person. At one point my parents joined a book club and we
received a Disney book periodically in the mail. This bedtime reading continued
to take place even after I began school.

The second theme was the lasting effect of both good
and poor instruction in the early primary grades. This student writes of a warm
(and humorous) memory of school:

Miss
Stamey, my kindergarten teacher, was young and had long soft hair. She kind of
reminded me of the pictures I had seen of my mom in the late sixties. I
remember singing and writing the alphabet, although I am not quite sure how
Miss Stamey went about teaching the alphabet. I do remember a time when Miss
Stamey was assessing my alphabet sound knowledge. I was very nervous. She asked
me, "What sound does this letter make?" pointing to a "M"
on the page. I didn’t know. I thought real hard about it and, as I often do
when I am perplexed, I took a deep breath and pressed my lips together to make
my thinking sound, "mmmm". Of course she replied, "That’s
right." Well I was so confused. How could I be right when I had not even
given an answer? This thought somewhat distracted me during the rest of the
assessment.

And a more negative recollection of poor instruction:

In second
grade we had spelling test. This was a somewhat difficult experience for me. I
broke down in tears and sobbed through many of my tests. I couldn’t spell
perfectly, and I was embarrassed. I fixed my weekly anxiety in third and fourth
grade. I learned to cheat. I was not very good at cheating, in fact my strategy
was quite blatant. I don’t understand why I never got caught when I had my
spelling book either hanging half way out of my desk, or laying in my lap.

Oh well, I
don’t believe that question is important enough to ponder. For some reason I
stopped cheating on my spelling tests when I reached the fifth grade, but I
still hated spelling. I refused to play spelling games or participate in
spelling bees. I still had my anxieties.

Many students became uncomfortably aware of how the
effects of a good early literacy start in the home were offset by poor
instruction. Note how this student begins with a warm recollection of reading
in the home, but follows with clearly negative memories of her early education:

My earliest
memories of reading are the ever popular bedtime stories. From the very
beginning I always had tons of books. Every night at bedtime I would pick out
at least two of my favorites & have mom or dad read them to me. I always
wanted “just one more” when the last one was read. I remember two of my
favorites were The Poky Little Puppy
& one that mom and dad ordered special just for me. It was a version of
Snow White, but it had my name & and my mom & dad’s & some friends
of the family’s names in the story. I can’t remember the actual story all that
well, but it something to do with a rose & I was helping Snow White & Dopey.
Those two books were my absolute favorites & I had to have them read to me
over & over again…

Today, I
don’t like to read. One of the reasons for this was because from first to third
grade every night we had a homework assignment to read certain pages in our
reading book. We had to read them three times; once silently, once out loud to
our parents, & once more silently. Do you know how old a story becomes when
you read it three times, and then again in class the next day? Another reason
that I dislike reading is because in third grade we had “timed readings.” We
had three minutes to read a story then we were graded on what we read. Well
I’ve always been a slow reader and three minutes was never enough time for me.
I would always do poorly on the quizzes.

I blame my
poor penmanship on my third grade teacher. I’m left handed, so I would slant my
paper to the left. But Mr. Page felt all papers should be slanted to the right
regardless of whether you’re right or left handed. So every time we had writing
class he made me slant my paper in a way that was not natural to me at all.
Thus it was very awkward for me to write anything, much less the appropriate
form of a certain letter. I make C’s in writing that year, whereas in second
grade I make A’s. You figure that one out.

So today
I’m ashamed of my handwriting. I don’t think it’s pretty at all, and I just
hope that anyone who has to read it can. Reading is more work than fun. As a matter of fact, I don’t
read for fun; I read when I have to. I read well but slow.

This student is even more explicit in pointing out the
paradox of the joy of reading in the home with the tedium and stress of reading
in the classroom:

Learning to
read and write was an unforgettable experience for me. In Kindergarten, reading
was a frustrating task, but it was for reasons other than the material being
too difficult, as was thought. As do most Kindergarten classes, we had the
three basic reading groups. I was placed in the middle group, and that began my
hatred for reading. I would become so angry during our lessons at all the kids
who couldn't read, "See Jane run," within a five minute time span.
The whole subject of reading was introduced as a tedious and boring process… At
night, my whole attitude on reading altered. My father would sit me on his lap
for hours reading to me. I would follow along, turn the pages, and sometimes
read aloud with him. My attention could not be diverted during this time. Come
bedtime, I would refuse to get under the covers unless my mother or father was
holding a book, preferably Dr. Seuss. Because of this, my parents couldn't
fathom the reports coming back from my teacher about my poor reading attitude.

Conclusions

These excerpts from students' early
literacy autobiographies provide substantive evidence of the power of the
experience. Too often, teacher education relies on telling students that
learning to read is an intense experience; that reading to children is a
cornerstone in the process; and that instruction, both good and bad, has a
lasting impact on each child. These excerpts demonstrate that writing literacy
biographies brings these abstractions to life. Students clearly demonstrate
reflection on their own experiences as a learner, the cornerstone for any
meta-level understanding of instructional practice. Understanding their own
experiences in learning how to read provides a powerful scaffold on which to
base their instruction.

On a more anecdotal level, I found the quality of
course dialogue to be among the richest in my teaching career. Students were
able to connect to abstract concepts about literacy and learning to read and
write in ways that seemed far more powerful than I had previously experienced.
The autobiographies and biographies provided a common text which anchored our
discussions of reading and writing instruction. Questions of "why" an
instructional strategy might be effective seemed always to find their way back
to the personal experiences we had uncovered in our writings. I have continued
to use and refine this activity for three more semesters. I'm convinced that
this is a viable and powerful tool for teacher education.

To gather further evidence of the effects of the
project, we archived and analyzed email messages sent by class members to
“lit-l”, the class listserv. Students were required to post some class
assignments to the listserv, but for the most part, it served as a sort of
electronic extension of class dialogue. In the following paper, Susan Gilbert,
analyzes these email messages.Susan, a
doctoral student and research assistant, assisted in planning and organizing
the class, and took an active role in contributing to the listserv. Her paper
provides further insight into how personal narratives can be utilized in
teacher education.

References

King, J.,
& Stahl, N. (1997). The king and I.
Paper presented at the American Reading Forum, Sanibel Island, Florida.

Lit-L Reflections

Susan Dean Gilbert

Dewey’s (1938) assertion that the “history of
educational theory is marked by opposition between the idea that education is
development from within and that it is formation from without”( p.17) illuminates
what student literacy reflections address: teachers developing as
professionals, engaging in concrete activities that support and challenge their
own professional development. It was in this spirit that the “Lit-L” listserv
was established especially for the literacy biography project described by
Moorman (this volume). Any email submitted to Lit-L was distributed to all
members of the class. The original intent of the listserv was to provide the
students with a less structured, informal “place” where their dialogue extended
beyond the classroom walls. Lit-L enabled them to reflect on their classroom
experiences, university class discussions, Website postings, and readings,
evolving into another way for students to reflect, not only on their own work,
but on the work of their colleagues. This extended their reflections to another
level: what Kusnic and Finley (1993) refer to as self-reflection. At this level
students think and write not only about what they have learned, but also about
what they have learned in relation to others. Taken as a whole, the emails are
an articulate report on the effects of class activities on students’ beliefs
and practice.

Students submitted over two hundred email messages to
Lit-L. Our analysis of these electronic exchanges pointed to an important
distinction: that learning to read and write are socially and culturally
embedded activities. Students reported a shift away from beliefs about literacy
being merely the ability to read and retain information. What emerged instead
were new beliefs, ideas and perceptions about literacy that included one’s
ability to participate in the discourse of a particular setting. Literacy, from
this perspective therefore, became, for the students, a social, cultural, and
political project (Gee, 1999).

In the following example, a student reflects on how
her teaching was influenced by her recalled experiences as a student. She
reports that she learned how to read and write with “worksheets and
embarrassing read-alouds.” In reaction to her own negative experiences as a
learner, she now approaches reading and writing with her students differently.
She has shifted from an explicit instruction paradigm to a more democratic,
respectful, socially constructed learning environment:

As for
considerations about curricular development of reading instruction, I feel like
the first thing that needs to be done to accomplish successful instruction is
to find some way of linking reading instruction to students’ interests and
needs. This includes making the instruction fun and interesting, providing a
multitude of reading materials and experiences linking reading to future
endeavors like jobs and school.

Another student writes:

I have
learned that there are several things that go into how a person learns how to read.
Not all of these things are school related. For instance, I believe that a
person’s surroundings and community play an important role. Also, people will
best learn how to read if they are reading things that are of interest to them.

This student reported that as a result of recalling
her own experiences, she engaged her students in a conversation about their
literacy orientations. As a result her belief changed from thinking that
everyone learned to read and write in a similar way to understanding that
children come into the classroom with varied and sometimes profoundly different
literacy histories. What resulted from this dialogue was the knowledge of her
students’ “Discourse” which Gee (1989) defines as “a socially accepted
association among ways of using language, of thinking, and of acting that can
be used to identify oneself as a member of a socially meaningful group or
‘social network.’” She discovered her students’ “identity kit” (Gee, 1989)
which resulted in a deeper understanding of their culture:

I was
really excited about my class and the reflections. What will my students say
about me? Will I be mentioned at all in their recollections? If I am mentioned,
will it be positive or negative? In the beginning of the year I was really
tested and questioned about why the students needed to know how to read. Many
of their parents and grandparents don’t know how to read or don’t read very
well. In fact this type of knowledge is not highly regarded in the culture of
my students and it shows. One of my students told me that he didn’t have to
know how to read, because they didn’t have to know how to read in jail. Many of
them think jail is a place everyone goes. I have twenty-two students and
sixteen of them have at least one parent in jail. Needless to say, there is
more of a focus on surviving in their community than on reading. But they are
beginning to see that knowledge/literacy and the ability to read and reason can
open doors. I don’t want to dismiss the idea that literacy depends on
community, but it can also be challenged and I am praying that for my students
it can also be changed.

Another concept that emerged was how early experiences
with books and writing with primarily parents and teachers impacted how the
students read and write as adults. These experiences have a direct impact on
how they currently teach reading. In their literacy autobiographies, many
recalled in full sensory detail, including feelings and nuances, their early
reading and writing experiences as pleasurable and pleasant. Through their
reading and online discussions they discovered that fluent readers share common
incubating experiences involving a special time of being read to, usually in
the lap or in the arms of a parent, or in the environment of a nurturing
classroom. These discussions were particularly powerful as the students allowed
themselves to fully immerse in an adult version of their emotions, coming as
close as one can ever get to the originating experience. Again, they discussed
how this writing/reading/reflecting-through-email experience translated
directly into their classroom practices:

There was
this major focus on penmanship, on the mechanics of writing rather than the
personal pleasure writing can provide. I think that writing needs to be
legible, but many times as teachers we focus on this aspect of writing more
than the pleasure that can come from good writing. If we are having a writing
workshop in class I think it should be separate from instruction dealing with
the mechanics of writing—I had positive experiences with writing in elementary
school. My second grade teacher would brag to my mother about my stories.
Children need to understand that writing can take you on a journey, so that we
need to introduce it in a way that it becomes a means expression for personal
reasons.

It was her recollection of positive early literacy
experiences with her father, her writing of poetry, and journaling and
peer-review in high school, that caused this student to consider the influences
of early home and school experiences:

This
recollection got me thinking about how much I do remember from school and the
influences in my life in the world of writing. I remember in sixth grade we had
a poetry assignment. I don’t remember the poetry, but I do remember the
feelings I had while writing and the environment. I also remember my Dad and
how encouraging and helpful he was. He was in the Air Force during this time of
my life and he wasn’t home a lot, but I do remember he was while I wrote my
poetry. I also remember my high school senior English teacher. She was one of
the greatest inspirations of my writing/reading career. We would begin the day
by responding to a journal prompt she had on the board. We would write a great
deal. We were avid creators, writers and publishers. We learned through this
and peer-editing about the sense of audience, different styles of writing,
writing for specific purposes.

Conclusions show that changing the fundamental beliefs
systems of teachers is difficult. This resistance to change stems from
teachers’ prior experiences as students. Zeichner and Liston (1987), in their
analysis of teacher education apprenticeship models, concluded that
“conventional approaches to self-directed growth inhibit student teachers and
thereby fail to assist in their full professional development.” These emails, I
believe, are examples of what true reflective practice is: an activity that
provides an opportunity for true, fundamental personal and professional growth.
This development is ultimately a personal charge and with it must come the
willingness to confront what works and what does not, how one changes as a
result, and what makes sense in light of those changes. This process puts
responsibility for growth and development in the hands of educators themselves.
Growth thereby becomes an ethical and moral requirement, a must for the
informed practitioner. Stories provide a powerful avenue for understanding and
reflection that can lead to such growth.